Buckle Up, Soldier
by Anna Fay
Summary: After his return from Jakku Poe didn't have much time to rest and heal. But now he does. And since I'm a great fan of the ever-so-popular "wounded soldier" theme and bittersweet romance, there's an OC too, to help him with that. Enjoy! :)
Before Ava could have even raised her hand to knock, the door slid open with a swish, revealing the tiny room, an ungodly chaos scattered on its floor, and Poe sitting at the middle of it. "Is this a bad time?" she asked, stepping only as far as the threshold when she realised that the clutter didn't consist only of tools, but several parts of his precious BB unit as well; most of the covering from its body, and some of its inner particles too.

"No. Not at all," replied Poe with the shake of his head as he tried to get up without kicking anything over. And he almost succeeded too, at the fair price of stubbing his naked toe against the leg of his bed.

"The others said you were looking for me," she said, putting her back against the door when it closed behind her.

"Yes, I was," he hissed with the pain, but then he stepped closer, giving her a smile. "I needed to see you."

They saw each other exactly three times since his return from his Secret Mission, but none of those occasions lasted too long. When she visited him at the sick bay after his return from Jakku, he was floating in a bacta tank and so full of drugs that he barely could lift a finger to wave hello. When they ran into each other on one of the corridors before his departure to Takodana, it was just that; a corner taken too hastily, his knee in her thigh and her elbow in his stomach, followed by a quick touch of the hand and a whispered good luck. And when he reported back to the Admiral after the destruction of Starkiller Base, she only saw him on a monitor, and couldn't even be sure that he saw her sitting behind her station. Most likely not.

"Here I am then," announced Ava cheerfully, looking at his face.

The bruises on his cheek started yellowing out nicely, but were still there. The small cuts on his lips weren't that fortunate; they still looked red and slightly swollen, probably because he licked and chewed them too often. He also had alarmingly dark circles under his eyes, not to mention his dilated pupils and the beads of sweat gathering at his temple and neck.

But before she could have asked if he was feeling unwell, or just had to get a few stimshots before he took off with the rest of his squadron, he bent his head and kissed her on the lips.

It was a kiss different from any of the ones he gave her before. During these past few months she have felt him hungry with adrenaline and with alcohol, with victory and with frustration too, but a kiss born of relief was new. It also tasted vaguely like fear. And to make things worse, Ava couldn't even tell if it was only his fear or the one that gripped her heart the moment they learned that both he and BB-8 had gone missing, and that he had last been seen in a village that the First Order burned to the ground too.

She tried to push those thoughts to the back of her mind the moment they formed, but he didn't make it easier. There was something strangely desperate about the way he kissed, and kissed, and kissed her, but never took a step further. He kept her pushed against the door and held her close, but he never took his hands from where he first put them on her waist, and ultimately it all made her skin crawl.

They needed to stop, or to move forward, so she buried her fingers into his hair at the back of his head and slid her tongue between his lips.

It seemed to do the trick. He relaxed a little, stopped acting like his life depended on the few mouthfuls of air inside her lungs and started caressing her side instead of just holding on to it.

Too bad that just as things were starting to work really well, a series of anxious beeps drew their attention from each other towards BB-8.

"Of course not," sighed Poe in reply to the droid's worries about being left in pieces for the whole night.

He wasn't the only pilot on the base who had an almost absurdly strong bond with their astromech, but it still amused Ava how genuinely distraught he looked when he had to chose between their reunion and putting the droid back together.

"I think you should finish him before you start with me," she suggested with a smile.

"Right," he chuckled. "You want to help me?"

"Sure," she agreed. "What's wrong with him?"

Before Poe could have answered, the droid informed her in a long, musical sequence of Binary that there had been some sand that found its way between his bits and pieces during their mission, so it needed to be removed, and his outer casing cleaned up a little before the ceremony on the following day.

"Will both of you get decorated?" Ava asked as she took a seat beside Poe on the floor.

"BB-8 certainly will, but I wouldn't be so sure about myself. I kinda messed things up." He tried to sound nonchalant, but it didn't quite come through.

Being without the entire outer casing of his main body and some of his inner parts too didn't keep the astromech from reminding Poe about how General Organa said there was no shame in what happened on Jakku and about how in his opinion they were the ones who saved the day at Starkiller Base.

"Thanks, buddy," he sighed, touching the droid's head briefly.

Ava hesitated before speaking, but she just couldn't keep silent. "They say you've been captured," she whispered, watching his face darkening briefly.

"Yes," he said in a voice completely without emotion, blowing at a particle and sending some sand flying before he looked back at her, bracing himself for her next question with a hard swallow. But his eyes begged her not to ask them, so she took him by surprise and only leaned closer to kiss his shoulder.

He touched the top of her head with his chin thankfully and stayed like that for a few moments, breathing so evenly that she knew he had to force it.

"So... how do I help?" Ava changed the subject before she could have changed her mind and ask him about his misson. Some nights were for talking, and others for forgetting, and it looked like he needed this one to be the latter.

Just as she suspected, there wasn't much that she could do, so she just sat by him with her back against the side of the bed, watching him work on the droid and trying to stay awake. Her life had seldom been in immediate danger behind her monitors, but two major operations within a little more than 24 hours could be almost as draining on the staff in the control room as on the pilots themselves.

"There you go, buddy, " Poe finally announced, as he put the last part of BB-8's cover back on. It made Ava's half-closed eyes snap open and the astromech emitt a happy little whistle as he turned around his own axis in delight. "And that will be all for tonight," he added, pulling his legs up to let the droid roll past him.

"Where were we?" He turned towards Ava as BB-8 settled into his corner, deactivated his sensors and started recharging.

Not counting the tool she couldn't even identify finding its way under her thigh, this kiss was a lot more like it. Especially when she moved to sit on his lap instead, because from then on it was great. His hands never left her body. First his fingers tangled themselves in her hair, undoing the securely pinned braids and knots, then they ran down her back to cup her arse as she dipped her head to kiss his jaw and neck.

"Does it still hurt?" she asked, touching his shoulder when they took off his shirt. Thanks to the doctors, the twin bruises running across his clavicles that were caused by what she guessed to be the straps of a parachute, looked to be at least a few days old. But she remembered seeing them fresh and purple only the morning before, at the sick bay.

He shook his head bravely, but still she only dared to touch it very gently, first with the pad of her thumb, then with her lips, earning a throaty sigh from him.

As he tilted back his head, Ava briefly wondered how many of the brave pilots of D'Qar were silently demanding the same treatment from their lovers that night, but she obeyed with a smile, peppering his throat with licks and kisses. Then she moved further up and kissed him fully on the lips again.

It wasn't hard to tell how much he enjoyed that from where she was sitting, so when he finally started pushing her off himself, Ava got to her feet eagerly, only to be joined by him within a moment. Soon their clothes joined the clutter on the floor, and as they brushed aside the bedcovers, they almost slipped off too.

Not that either of them cared.

After the first few hungry kisses that he placed on her neck and breasts, Poe changed his pace dramatically. Normally he loved to please, with kisses and touches that could make a woman go mad, but now he held her too close for any of that. He lowered his head and buried his nose in the crook of her neck too, giving her the slowest thrusts of his hips. In response she put her legs behind his waist, pulling him closer, enjoying the heat radiating from his skin and the way his every breath caressed her.

It wasn't the wildest or most passionate nights they have ever had, and when she came, she came with barely more than a sigh. But when he relaxed in her arms after his own relief, she kissed his hair and caressed the back of his neck with a content smile.

She didn't want to let go of him even when he lifted his head from her shoulder, so when he turned on his side, she turned with him until they were laying stretched out on the bed and facing each other. He still looked awfully tired, but his eyes seemed a little clearer.

"I'm glad you're back," she whispered as he pulled the cover over themselves and put his head on the pillow beside hers.

"It's good to be back." He caressed her side absentmindedly. "Are you staying for the night?"

She didn't want to say no, but the look he gave her made it impossible to refuse him anyway, so she leaned in and kissed him on the lips gently. "I'd love to."

oOo

Poe was wide awake long after she fell asleep. First he lay beside her with his eyes closed, listening as her breathing evened out and enjoying her presence, but when he felt like hours have started to pass by, he looked up at her with a tired sigh.

He knew this would happen when he demanded to be released from the sick bay and given medication that allowed him to fly, but he never though it would be this hard to face the night. The thoughs he could easily ignore in the cockpit started to creep back up from the deeper, darker parts of his brain, and they made him want to jump out of bed and do something. Anything. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to get into his X-Wing and destroy another Starkiller Base.

But when he sat up, he did it carefully, so that he wouldn't wake Ava.

Placing his feet on the floor, he rubbed at the bruise left behind the stimshots on his thigh and looked around the tiny room. It was exactly like all the other rooms he have lived in the better part of his adult life, or like all the rooms on all the military bases across the galaxy, and it made him feel at home. It took him by surprise a few years before when he last visited Yavin-4 that while he still loved the lush forests and their innumerable rivers, he now belonged in rooms of concrete and electrical wires.

As he felt the matress shift, he looked at Ava behind his shoulder. She was just moving around in her sleep, but Poe couldn't help watching her doing so.

He couldn't remember much about what was going through his head when he was being held captive and interrogated, but he could easily recall laying on his back at the dingy store-room on Jakku, waiting for someone to answer his distress call and thinking about all the things he wanted to survive for. She was one of those. At the Academy they taught them that setting simple, clear goals was the way to sucess, and even though they meant it in terms of military strategy, he couldn't find any wish simpler or clearer than a bottle of fresh water and kissing her until her knees buckled.

The water was easy enough to get, but he had to wait a little longer for the kiss. First until after the operation on Takodana, then on Starkiller Base.

His body hated flying out with the rest of his squadron only some six hours after returning to D'Qar, but it was the best thing he could have done. He needed to get rid of his feeling of helplessness, and nothing could have helped with that better than action.

Almost nothing...

There was no way of telling if Ava just opened her eyes or had been aware of him watching her without seeing for some time, but as Poe noticed that she was awake, he shook his head with an apologetic smile.

"What's wrong?" she asked, sitting up gingerly.

"Sorry," whispered Poe. "I didn't want to wake you."

"Well, you did," she said with a shrug, rubbing her neck. "What is it?" she asked again as she looked back at him, and she sounded genuinely concerned.

He wanted to talk to her about it, but he also knew that it would be better to wait until he found both the strength and the right words for it, so he just tapped the bruise on his thigh and went with the simple answer. "Too much adrenaline," he said with what he hoped to be an easy smile.

For a moment she looked like this time she wouldn't buy it, but then she moved closer, caressing his upper arm. "I thought you flyboys can't get enough of it," she whispered jokingly, tracing the emblem of Rapier Squadron etched into his skin.

"We can't," he agreed, running his eyes over her nakedness and biting down at his lower lip for maximum effect. It made her give him an almost feline smirk, and he couldn't remember seeing her any more beautiful than this; sitting in his bed, half asleep, half ready for another go.

"Then buckle up, soldier," she ordered, leaning in to kiss him.

* * *

 _So that's it, my version of Poe's return. I wanted to keep it bittersweet for now, instead of jumping into the thick of the drama, and I hope you liked it.  
If you did, please, leave a review._


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